


Minerva and the Paycocke

by inamac



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Difference, Creature Fic, Dubious Consent, F/M, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-05-11 17:02:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5634691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inamac/pseuds/inamac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before leaving Hogwarts, Lucius asks Minerva for advice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Minerva and the Paycocke

**Author's Note:**

> Written for MinervaFest 2015 on LJ to a prompt asking for 'credible Lucius/Minerva'. This was a real challenge – and I’m not sure that I kept entirely within the request for ‘no magic, no non-con’ but hope that the prompter will forgive a tiny bending of the rules. The title came first but the story did not develop at all as I anticipated, so you may never know _How Lucius Malfoy Learned to Cast a Patronus and What Form it Took,_ and will have to make do with _How Minerva McGonagall Became an Unexpected Fairy Godmother_.

_Extracts from the (unexpurgated) memoirs of Minerva McGonagall, as edited by Lorcan Scamander. These passages do not appear in the published Memoirs (for reasons that will be obvious)._

I suppose I've always felt a bit sorry for the Malfoys. Ever since Abraxus (who was three years my senior in school) was involved in that disastrous Triwizard Exchange – this was after the Tournament had been banned, when the schools still had an annual exchange agreement for the sixth form students. I was too young, and in any case too focussed on my OWLS to pay much attention, but you would have had to be blind and deaf to have missed the gossip in the Gryffindor common room when the Seniors returned from their visit to Durmstrang minus young Malfoy, who had been collected hurriedly on the family flying carpet (they were legal back then) and returned to Malfoy Manor with a new veela wife – fresh from her mountain eerie and already showing signs of pregnancy.

What? Oh yes. Abraxus was Sorted into Gryffindor. You don't imagine that a member of Slytherin House would have been foolish enough to have thrown away a good education for a bit of excitement in the Durmstrang mountains? I confess that, after I left Hogwarts, my own adventures among the centaurs may have been as much influenced by his example as by the romance of finding a spouse among the magical races. In countries where the Muggles were far too preoccupied with the aftermath of their war to pay attention to the unspoiled hills and valleys of the magical places I have danced with nymphs and satyrs on the slopes above Delphi, swum with merfolk in the Nile delta, and supped mead with pinney and lumikki in Finnish forests. I did not have the good fortune to find a husband, or any fortune at all to weather the scandal as the Malfoys did.

By the time I returned to Scotland and was finally persuaded to take up a teaching post at Hogwarts the Malfoy scandal had been long forgotten and the offspring of that ill-starred union was a grown boy who had received his Letter of Invitation to join our first year pupils.

I remember watching with curiosity as young Lucius approached the Sorting Stool. The white-blond hair left little doubt of his veela parentage, but he had his father's determination too, on his set, nervous face. I expected the Hat to consign him to the House I shared with his father – it always had problems distinguishing bravery from foolhardiness – but after a noticeably thoughtful pause it declared "Slytherin!" The boy looked smug as he jumped from the stool (almost upsetting old Herbert Beery who was preparing for the next candidate), and ran across to the Slytherin table where the two eldest Black girls were sitting with identical 'cat got the cream' expressions to welcome him.

So that was it. The Blacks were courting Malfoy money. They were one of the old Pureblood families whose daughters had been used as currency and sons as wand-fodder for centuries. They had a long history of arranged marriages, sometimes between cousins when they were bairns barely breeched.

I wondered whether the Hat had somehow been influenced. Slytherin House had been getting some odd assignees lately, ever since the Riddle boy had begun gathering acolytes from that House. But I dismissed the thought. The Hat was an ancient artefact, imbued with magic by the Founders themselves. It would take a wizard with Merlin's own skill to bend or break those enchantments. Nevertheless, I resolved to keep an eye on young Malfoy, beyond my duty owed to the son of a fellow Gryffindor.

He proved to be a model student, though his skills were more focussed on academic subjects such as Arithmancy and Charm Theory than on practical work such as my own Transfiguration classes and Horace's Potions lessons. I supposed, after he had scraped through his OWLs in those subjects and had dropped them for his NEWTs that I would not see much of him. So I was all the more surprised when, one dull day in November when most of the Upper Sixth were sitting mock exams, I opened the door of my study to an imperious knock and found seventeen year old Lucius Malfoy standing stiffly upright before the oak.

"Professor, are you free? Could I have a word with you?"

What could I say? It was a cold day and the corridors were freezing. I ushered him inside and motioned him to a seat. He took the end of the sofa closest to the fire while I lowered myself into my wing chair. I did not offer him tea and biscuits, his demeanour was far too formal for a custard cream. This assured young man was a long way from the nervous eleven year old whose Sorting I remembered. The only thing that was the same was the Veela-pale hair, worn long now as was the fashion among teenage Muggles – and the hangers-on of Tom Riddle's faction.

"Well," I asked, flicking another log onto the fire and watching the flames paint red highlights across his pale features, "what is it that I you wish to discuss with me that you can’t take to your own Housemaster?"

His nostrils flared, not so much a snort of derision as a response to a memory of a nasty smell. "Professor Slughorn," he said, "has no experience of anything beyond his potions and his own sycophantic brand of politics. He has no finer feelings."

I grinned. He echoed my own views on the potions master. "I take it that you need advice of a personal nature then?"

"I want to know whether it is possible to _Transfigure_ a part of oneself. Either temporarily or permanently."

I knew enough about teenage boys to be unsurprised by the question. There were Transfiguration text books in the library which fell open at the relevant portion of the index – but I could not resist a small tease. "To change ones eye or hair colour, for example? There are potions for that. And short-term charms that will grow gills or feathers. Transfiguration is normally only applied to the transformation of one object or animal into another. Cats and kettles, ravens and writing-desks. I recall one student who changed his nose into a corkscrew. It lasted only a few hours, and was useless for actually pulling corks."

He did not smile. Plainly this was too serious for levity. "What about Animagus charms?" he asked.

"They are very difficult, very carefully controlled by the Ministry, and allow a human to change into an animal. There are no half-measures."

He looked dejected and resigned. "I thought so. There was nothing in the books, but I hoped... well..." He pressed his long fingers onto the arm of the sofa and made to rise. I took pity on him.

"On the other hand," I said, "there are transformations between magical races. Fairy spells that will change a merman's tail into legs, a harpy's wings into arms, a Selkie's fur to skin. Even Muggles have stories about this. Was that what you had in mind? I warn you, as all the tales do, that the cost can be very great."

He settled back into the chair. His grey eyes met mine, calculating. "Dad said you were clever. You know, don't you?"

"I deduce that you inherited more than your hair colour from your mother's side of the family. And that you would prefer to keep certain veela characteristics private. A minor physical transformation might be possible. The alternative is to use the _Imperius_ curse on anyone who might reveal your secret.

"That's an Unforgiveable," he said, but did not seem averse to the idea.

"I grant you that a change spell would be preferable, though more difficult. Are you willing to let me see the extent of the problem? Are there... wings?"

He shuddered. "Thank Merlin, no. It's... well... my... penis."

For a fraction of a second I wondered whether young Malfoy was over-dramatising the normal concerns of an adolescent boy, but he could not have reached his present age without learning basic wizard biology. "I assume that you use a glamour?"

He nodded. "Of course. But it would not – could not – deceive in close contact. Which is rather the point."

I noted the correction. Lucius Malfoy was not a shy virgin, I was not the only witch in the world, or even in Hogwarts, who was willing to experiment with her partners, but there were certain witches, certain Families (old blood demanded the capital letter), for whom 'different' meant 'inferior'.

"I think," I said, attempting a detached Professorial tone, "That I should examine the problem."

"That's what I came for," he said. He swung his long legs up onto the sofa and parted his robe, then unlaced his drawers (silk, I noticed) to reveal his groin.

I should have told him to cover himself up and leave. That he was putting both of us in a precarious position. But he was of age, and I was not his teacher, or even in his House. And I have never been able to resist the lure of the exotic – or the forbidden.

At first glance he seemed normal and human enough, I wondered whether he was still using a glamour, but as he parted his thighs and the unnaturally white, stiff shaft dropped between them, I saw it rested on a cluster of white-furred, grape-like testicles. Veela anatomy, designed for mating in flight where gravity was not a consideration. It was a pity, I reflected, that Malfoy didn't have the wings, though I found myself wondering how good he was on a broomstick.

"Aren’t you going to touch?" he asked. "I expected a thorough examination of form _and_ function." His grin was wicked and unmistakably inviting. A confident teenager who reminded me irresistibly of his father.

"I'm old enough to be your mother," I made one last protest.

He smiled. "My mother is more than two hundred and fifty years old. I think you have the advantage of her." 

It was a clear invitation, and I did not argue further. I reached out a hand to touch the head and felt it rise to my questing fingers. He bucked, thrusting his hips forward and swallowing a cry in his throat that held a faint echo of a Veela screech.

I was suddenly wet and wanting.

I could say that I have no memory of what happened after that. Those who fall victim to Veela magic seldom do. But I had been prepared, and every moment of that coupling is seared warm on my memory as, he told me later, it is on his.

It was much later, when we were seated comfortably together on the sofa with mugs of fortified coffee, that he returned to the question of his dilemma.

"Those fairy spells you talked about, could you do one?"

"If you're absolutely sure?"

"I am. You are a very… adventurous… woman, Minerva, but also unusual. There are very few witches who would not look on me as either a freak or a challenge, and I have no desire to be regarded as either."

He was wise beyond his years – perhaps he inherited that from his mother, it is not a Gryffindor trait – and he convinced me. I set down my cup and crossed the room to fetch what would be needed from the security of my warded desk. It was a filigree box, French fairy-work, very old and very beautiful.

"When your father invited me to be your Godmother," I said, "I agreed, but I told him that I would not bestow the customary gift until your Coming of Age, and until I was certain that you understood the consequences. I think the time has come."

I gave him the box. He turned it in his hands, admiring the delicacy of the lacework, recognising fairy craftsmanship, for a fairy gift. "What's in it?" he asked.

I smiled. "The Muggles would say 'three wishes', but in fact there is only one. It is a charm that you can use once, for whatever you desire. If you use it for a transformation the spell will be permanent, except that it will wear off on one day every seven years – on the anniversary of the day it is first used."

He opened the box and lifted out the charm between finger and thumb. It hung twirling in the firelight, pregnant with promise – and danger.

"How do I use it?"

"Make a wish."

He took a breath, glanced down at his now-closed robe, and spoke so softly that I could not hear the words. The charm hung fire, then flared blue and silver – and died to a trickle of ash.

Lucius Malfoy had his wish.

And I had a memory.

The End.


End file.
